EPOCH OF THE THREE KINGDOMS.—SHINRA.
When Shinra becomes first known to us from Japanese tradition, her
place in the peninsula is in the southeast, comprising portions of the
modern provinces of Kang-wen and Kiung-sang. The people in this warm
and fertile part of the peninsula had very probably sent many colonies
of settlers over to the Japanese Islands, which lay only a hundred
miles off, with Tsushima for a stepping-stone. It is probable that the
“rebels” in Kiushiu, so often spoken of in old Japanese histories, were
simply Coreans or their descendants, as, indeed, the majority of the
inhabitants of Kiushiu originally had been. The Yamato tribe, which
gradually became paramount in Japan, were probably immigrants of old
Kokorai stock, that is, men of the Fuyu race, who had crossed from the
north of Corea over the Sea of Japan, to the land of Sunrise, just as
the Saxons and Engles pushed across the North Sea to England. They
found the Kumaso, or Kiushiu “rebels,” troublesome, mainly because
these settlers from the west, or southern mainland of Corea, considered
themselves to be the righteous owners of the island rather than the
Yamato people. At all events, the pretext that led the mikado Chiu-ai,
who is said to have reigned from 192 to 200 A.D., to march against them
was, that these people in Kiushiu would not acknowledge his authority.
His wife, the Amazonian queen Jingu, was of the opinion that the root
of the trouble was to be found in the peninsula, and that the army
should be sent across the sea. Her husband, having been killed in
battle, the queen was left to carry out her purposes, which she did at
the date said to be 202 A.D. She set sail from Hizen, and reached the
Asian mainland probably at the harbor of Fusan. Unable to resist so
well-appointed a force, the king of Shinra submitted and became the
declared vassal of Japan. Envoys from Hiaksai and another of the petty
kingdoms also came to the Japanese camp and made friends with the
invaders. After a two months’ stay, the victorious fleet, richly laden
with precious gifts and spoil, returned.
How much of truth there is in this narrative of Jingu it is difficult
to tell. The date given cannot be trustworthy. The truth seems at least
this, that Shinra was far superior to the Japan of the early Christian
centuries. Buddhism was formally established in Shinra in the year 528;
and as early as the sixth century a steady stream of
immigrants—traders, artists, scholars, and teachers, and later Buddhist
missionaries—passed from Shinra into Japan, interrupted only by the
wars which from time to time broke out. The relations between Nippon
and Southern Corea will be more fully related in another chapter, but
it will be well to remember that the Japanese always laid claim to the
Corean peninsula, and to Shinra especially, as a tributary nation. They
supported that claim not only whenever embassies from the two nations
met at the court of China, but they made it a more or less active part
of their national policy down to the year 1876. Many a bloody war grew
out of this claim, but on the other hand many a benefit accrued to
Japan, if not to Shinra.
Meanwhile, in the peninsula the leading state expanded her borders by
gradual encroachments upon the little “kingdom” of Mimana to the
southwest and upon Hiaksai on the north. The latter, having always
considered Shinra to be inferior, and even a dependent, war broke out
between the two states as soon as Shinra assumed perfect independence.
Korai and Hiaksai leagued themselves against Shinra, and the game of
war continued, with various shifting of the pieces on the board, until
the tenth century. The three rival states mutually hostile, the
Japanese usually friends to Hiaksai, the Chinese generally helpers of
Shinra, the northern nations beyond the Tumen and Sungari assisting
Korai, varying their operations in the field with frequent alliances
and counter-plots, make but a series of dissolving-views of battle and
strife, into the details of which it is not profitable to enter. Though
Korai and Hiaksai felt the heaviest blows from China, Shinra was
harried oftenest by the armies of her neighbors and by the Japanese.
Indeed, from a tributary point of view, it seems questionable whether
her alliances with China were of any benefit to her. In times of peace,
however, the blessings of education and civilization flowed freely from
her great patron. Though farthest east from China, it seems certain
that Shinra was, in many respects, the most highly civilized of the
three states. Especially was this the case during the Tang era (618–905
A.D.), when the mutual relations between China and Shinra were closest,
and arts, letters, and customs were borrowed most liberally by the
pupil state. Even at the present time, in the Corean idiom, “Tang-yang”
(times of the Tang and Yang dynasties) is a synonym of prosperity. The
term for “Chinese,” applied to works of art, poetry, coins, fans, and
even to a certain disease, is “Tang,” instead of the ordinary word for
China, since this famous dynastic title represents to the Corean mind,
as to the student of Kathayan history, one of the most brilliant epochs
known to this longest-lived of empires. What the names of Plantagenet
and Tudor represent to an Anglo-Saxon mind, the terms Tang and Sung are
to a Corean.
During this period, Buddhism was being steadily propagated, until it
became the prevailing cult of the nation. Reserving the story of its
progress for a special chapter, we notice in this place but one of its
attendant blessings. In the civilization of a nation, the possession of
a vernacular alphabet must be acknowledged to be one of the most potent
factors for the spread of intelligence and culture. It is believed by
many linguists that the Choctaws and Coreans have the only two perfect
alphabets in the world. It is agreed by natives of Chō-sen that their
most profound scholar and ablest man of intellect was Chul-chong, a
statesman at the court of Kion-chiu, the capital of Shinra. This famous
penman, a scholar in the classics and ancient languages of India as
well as China, is credited with the invention of the Nido, or Corean
syllabary, one of the simplest and most perfect “alphabets” in the
world. It expresses the sounds of the Corean language far better than
the kata-kana of Japan expresses Japanese. Chul-chong seems to have
invented the Nido syllabary by giving a phonetic value to a certain
number of selected Chinese characters, which are ideographs expressing
ideas but not sounds. Perhaps the Sanskrit alphabet suggested the model
both for manner of use and for forms of letters. The Nido is composed
almost entirely of straight lines and circles, and the letters
belonging to the same class of labials, dentals, etc., have a
similarity of form easily recognized. The Coreans state that the Nido
was invented in the early part of the eighth century, and that it was
based on the Sanskrit alphabet. It is worthy of note that, if the date
given be true, the Japanese kata-kana, invented a century later, was
perhaps suggested by the Corean.
One remarkable effect of the use of phonetic writing in Corea and Japan
has been to stereotype, and thus to preserve, the ancient sounds and
pronunciation of words of the Chinese, which the latter have lost.
These systems of writing outside of China have served, like Edison’s
phonographs, in registering and reproducing the manner in which the
Chinese spoke, a whole millennium ago. This fact has already opened a
fertile field of research, and may yet yield rich treasures of
discovery to the sciences of history and linguistics.
Certainly, however, we may gather that the Tang era was one of learning
and literary progress in Corea, as in Japan—all countries in pupilage
to China feeling the glow of literary splendor in which the Middle
Kingdom was then basking. The young nobles were sent to obtain their
education at the court and schools of Nanking, and the fair damsels of
Shinra bloomed in the harem of the emperor. Imperial ambassadors
frequently visited the court of this kingdom in the far east. Chinese
costume and etiquette were, for a time, at least, made the rigorous
rule at court. On one occasion, in 653 A.D., the envoy from Shinra to
the mikado came arrayed in Chinese dress, and, neglecting the
ceremonial forms of the Japanese court, attempted to observe those of
China. The mikado was highly irritated at the supposed insult. The
premier even advised that the Corean be put to death; but better
counsels prevailed. During the eighth and ninth centuries this
flourishing kingdom was well known to the Arab geographers, and it is
evident that Mussulman travellers visited Shinra or resided in the
cities of the peninsula for purposes of trade and commerce, as has been
shown before.
Kion-chiu, the capital of Shinra, was a brilliant centre of art and
science, of architecture and of literary and religious light. Imposing
temples, grand monasteries, lofty pagodas, halls of scholars,
magnificent gateways and towers adorned the city. In campaniles,
equipped with water-clocks and with ponderous bells and gongs, which,
when struck, flooded the valleys and hill-tops with a rich resonance,
the sciences of astronomy and horoscopy were cultivated. As from a
fountain, rich streams of knowledge flowed from the capital of Shinra,
both over the peninsula and to the court of Japan. Even after the decay
of Shinra’s power in the political unity of the whole peninsula, the
nation looked upon Kion-chiu as a sacred city. Her noble temples,
halls, and towers stood in honor and repair, enshrining the treasures
of India, Persia, and China, until the ruthless Japanese torch laid
them in ashes in 1596.
The generation of Corean people during the seventh century, when the
Chinese hordes desolated large portions of the peninsula and crushed
out Hiaksai and Korai, saw the borders of Shinra extending from the
Everlasting White Mountains to the Island of Tsushima, and occupying
the entire eastern half of the peninsula. From the beginning of the
eighth until the tenth century, Shinra is the supreme state, and the
political power of the Eastern Kingdom is represented by her alone. Her
ambition tempted, or her Chinese master commanded, her into an invasion
of the kingdom of Pu-hai beyond her northern border, 733 A.D. Her
armies crossed the Tumen, but met with such spirited resistance that
only half of them returned. Shinra’s desire of conquest in that
direction was appeased, and for two centuries the land had rest from
blood.
Until Shinra fell, in 934 A.D., and united Corea rose on the ruins of
the three kingdoms, the history of this state, as found in the Chinese
annals, is simply a list of her kings, who, of course, received
investiture from China. On the east, the Japanese, having ceased to be
her pupils in civilization during times of peace, as in time of war
they were her conquerors, turned their attention to Nanking, receiving
directly therefrom the arts and sciences, instead of at second-hand
through the Corean peninsula. They found enough to do at home in
conquering all the tribes in the north and east and centralizing their
system of government after the model of the Tangs in China. For these
reasons the sources of information concerning the eighth and ninth
centuries fail, or rather it is more exact to say that the history of
Shinra is that of peace instead of war. In 869 we read of pirates from
her shores descending upon the Japanese coast to plunder the tribute
ships from Buzen province, and again, in 893, that a fleet of fifty
junks, manned by these Corean rovers, was driven off from Tsushima by
the Japanese troops, with the loss of three hundred slain. Another
descent of “foreign pirates,” most probably Coreans, upon Iki Island,
in 1019, is recorded, the strangers being beaten off by reinforcements
from the mainland. The very existence of these marauders is, perhaps, a
good indication that the power of the Shinra government was falling
into decay, and that lawlessness within the kingdom was preparing the
way for some mighty hand to not only seize the existing state, but to
unite all Corea into political, as well as geographical, unity. In the
far north another of those great intermittent movements of population
was in process, which, though destroying the kingdom of Puhai beyond
the Tumen, was to repeople the desolate land of Korai, and again call a
dead state to aggressive life. From the origin to the fall of Shinra
there were three royal families of fifty-five kings, ruling nine
hundred and ninety-three years, or seven years less than a millennium.
Despite the modern official name of the kingdom, Chō-sen, the
people of Corea still call their country Gaoli, or Korai, clinging
to the ancient name. In this popular usage, unless we are mistaken,
there is a flavor of genuine patriotism. Chō-sen does indeed mean
Morning Calm, but the impression made on Western ears, and more
vividly upon the eye by means of the Chinese characters, is apt to
mislead. The term is less a reflection of geographical position
than of the inward emotions of those who first of all were more
Chinese than Corean in spirit, and of a desire for China’s favor.
The term Chō-sen savors less of dew and dawn than of policy and
prosy fact. It is probable, despite the Corean’s undoubted love of
nature and beautiful scenery, that Americans and Europeans have
been led astray as to the real significance of the phrase “morning
calm.” At the bottom, it means rather peace with China than the
serenity of dewy morning. Audience of the Chinese emperor to his
vassals is always given at daybreak, and to be graciously received
after the long and tedious prostrations is an auspicious beginning
as of a day of heaven upon earth. To the founder of Corea, Ki Tsze,
the gracious favor of the Chow emperor was as “morning calm;” and
so to Ni Taijo, in 1392 A.D., was the sunshine of the Ming
emperor’s favor. In both instances the name Chō-sen given to their
realm had, in reality, immediate reference to the dayspring of
China’s favor, and “the calm of dawn” to the smile of the emperor.